I knew about the application of oil and gas law concerning covenants way back in 1981 because of the way my family became involved in oil and gas was through Exxon-Mobil in 1980. The lease we signed had words about development which to me we would share the fair market value of the profits from the gas and eventually oil. The records of thirty years of production show that the lease was marked because we are black and the production from the Haynesville Shale is anything but development of the lease.
The people in Gladewater Texas back in the 50's flooded my land that Grandma Becky had purchased in the 1870's by building Lake Gladewater, Granny cashed the escrow checks she received for that land under the waters of the lake. Lee Raymond and Matthew Clarke requested that my family sign an oil and gas lease in 1980, informing us that the lease probably would never pay out. When the well that is symbolic of how Exxon-Mobil is a racist and discriminatory to black royalty owners with leases that it operates to produce oil and gas was drilled in 1993 unknowingly to them it confirmed that the two wells at Gladewater Gas Unit #5 had tapped the Bossier-Haynesville Shale with its 20,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas and oil. The records for the past thirty years from the Texas Railroad Commission expose how the production in Upshur County Texas was favorable to the white royalty owners on the others side of the lake since 1993 when the rules were changed to drill three wells on an lease adjacent to GGU #5. Even the horizontal implications surfaced when that well was reclassified as an oil well in 2006 but in total disregard for the Covenant was shut in by Exxon-Mobil which evidently paid the delay rentals to the other royalty owners at the lease; we never although owning 1/8 of a 640 acre lease received a dime of the delay rentals for oil or gas.
The people in Gladewater Texas back in the 50's flooded my land that Grandma Becky had purchased in the 1870's by building Lake Gladewater, Granny cashed the escrow checks she received for that land under the waters of the lake. Lee Raymond and Matthew Clarke requested that my family sign an oil and gas lease in 1980, informing us that the lease probably would never pay out. When the well that is symbolic of how Exxon-Mobil is a racist and discriminatory to black royalty owners with leases that it operates to produce oil and gas was drilled in 1993 unknowingly to them it confirmed that the two wells at Gladewater Gas Unit #5 had tapped the Bossier-Haynesville Shale with its 20,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas and oil. The records for the past thirty years from the Texas Railroad Commission expose how the production in Upshur County Texas was favorable to the white royalty owners on the others side of the lake since 1993 when the rules were changed to drill three wells on an lease adjacent to GGU #5. Even the horizontal implications surfaced when that well was reclassified as an oil well in 2006 but in total disregard for the Covenant was shut in by Exxon-Mobil which evidently paid the delay rentals to the other royalty owners at the lease; we never although owning 1/8 of a 640 acre lease received a dime of the delay rentals for oil or gas.
Why is Exxon-Mobil systematically telling my people we have no rights even though we know the lease is in the middle of the Haynesville Shale? Why is oil and gas law honored for one group of oil/gas royalty owners, particularly white, in Upshur County Texas by Exxon-Mobil? Longevity of the lease in front of $95.00 a barrel oil cannot represent the reason Well #2 completed in 1993 which was reclassified as an oil well in 2006 is not producing paying qualities of oil and gas, now. Every year Exxon-Mobil's profits soar to record levels so why does it have a producing oil/gas lease at Gladewater Gas Unit #5 in the Bossier-Haynesville Shale which has not been developed in thirty years; Covenant Breaker.
